Thankfully over. But it is always fun to watch the expression on the kiddies faces as I talk about the courses... and the requirements....
Today in my law class, I talked about precedent and how a court can get around precedent by distinquishing facts, modifying precedent or outright overruling precedent. That led to an interesting discussion of the new SCOTUS and the dynamic in place with J.'s Roberts and Alito. I mentioned that rather than overrule Roe v. Wade, the conventional wisdom seems to suggest it will be "modified" over time. We liberal types prefer the word "chipping away" at the precedent, but since that phrase was not a choice in the legal vocabulary list I distributed today students will make do with "modify."
I sent them off to do a quick questionnaire to determine with which justice their views most closely align. Unfortunately, O'Connor and Rehnquist have not been remove and substituted with Roberts and Alito, but it will be interesting to see. My experience is that students are growing more and more conservative.
Be afraid.
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2 comments:
It's interesting, because as liberal as I am myself, I agree that it seems to me as well that people my age and younger become progressively more conservative. Maybe it's a generational thing, though. My parents were in college in the late '60s. This year's average 18 year old freshman, however, probably has partents that were in college in the late '70s or early '80s (Regan era-ish). So if we're passing on our values to our children, that suggests we'll have to wait until my kids grow up to see an upswing in liberalism again.
Of course my family has a fairly long generational cycle. Some people that were in college in the '60s probably have 18 year old grandchildren by now.
In that case, I, and, to some extent, my brother, are definitely anomalies; my parents (who were in college in the early sixties, too) and other siblings are quite conservative, and becoming more and more so as time goes on. My paternal grandmother on the other hand, was quite liberal.
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